Roasted garlic dip with spinach for New Year’s Eve

By Jo | Published: January 2, 2010

dip_with_pita

New Year’s is rarely a big holiday for me.  I never make resolutions, in part because I know I won’t keep them.  You won’t see any 2009 recaps or 2010 resolutions on this blog.  I hope 2010 will bring us all more happiness and less stress, which seems very promising.  That’s about all I have to say about that.

However, I do have to tell you about the dip I just made for a New Year’s Eve party.  I like a good party, and if you do too, you should add this dip to your repertoire because it is amazing.  If you love garlic, you’ll love this.  And if you think garlic is just all right (though I can’t imagine how anyone could feel that way), you’ll probably still like it a lot.

Here’s the back story: last week, I had dinner with my parents at Bocado, a tapas restaurant in Massachusetts.  We had a lot of great food that night (I love small plate restaurants, because you get to try so many things), but the standout of the evening was “Ajillo azotado con espinacas y queso”: a roasted garlic dip with spinach and feta.  Note that it’s a garlic dip with spinach, not a spinach dip with garlic.  It was very garlicky and very good, and we drove our waitress crazy because we kept asking for more bread until we had literally cleaned out the bowl.

But its brilliance was in its simplicity, and even before we left the restaurant, Nathan and I were plotting to make our own version. New Year’s Eve seemed like the perfect occasion to try.  And it turns out, it was really easy.  So easy that I felt like a culinary Dr Frankenstein, standing in my kitchen giving life to a food that came from somewhere else.  (If you ever hear me cackling in the kitchen and talking to “my creation,” you have my permission to intervene… or run away.)

The centerpiece of this dip is the roasted garlic.  You could do it with fresh garlic and get something that tasted okay, but it wouldn’t be the same at all, because roasted garlic is a whole different kind of tasty.

roasted_garlic_heads

Roasting garlic, while intimidating, isn’t all that hard; it just requires planning ahead.  When I roasted my garlic for this recipe, I made far more than I needed, so now I’ve got a little dish of roasted garlic sitting in the fridge and it’s oh-so-exciting that I’d suggest you do the same.  It’s messy enough to make that it’s worth making in bulk.  (It’s messy enough that I don’t do it as often as I should.)  You only need one head of roasted garlic for this recipe, but I made four, and I’m saving the rest for later.

roasted_garlic_cloves_skins

There are a few ways to roast garlic, but this is my current favorite:

  1. Heat the oven (I use a toaster oven) to 350.
  2. Take several heads of garlic.  With a sharp knife, cut about 1/4 inch off the top of each head so the tops of some of the cloves are exposed. (I’m not sure of the reasoning behind this, but it’s standard practice, and it does let you see how it’s coming along.)
  3. Put the garlic cut-side up on a piece of aluminum foil, and drizzle it with olive oil – this will help it not to burn.  Wrap the foil into a packet around the garlic so that it’s tightly sealed.
  4. Put the foil packet in the oven for at least an hour, up to an hour and a half.  The ideal is to have all the garlic a deep brown color, with the top just starting to turn black.  It’s okay if it starts to burn, because you can remove the burned parts.
  5. Let the garlic cool, then remove the tasty cloves from the skin.  This is the messy part.  I find it easiest to work methodically through the cloves, freeing each one from its skin and popping it loose.  Put the cloves into a little bowl, and discard the leftover skin.  If the garlic has gotten really mushy, you can squeeze it out.  Removing the cloves intact gets you the most yield, and makes the least mess.  (At least in my experience -if you have a better way, please share in the comments!)  But however careful you are, be prepared to get your hands covered in garlic mush and little bits of skin.

Once you have your roasted garlic, you can make the dip.

dip_in_processor

Roasted garlic dip with spinach and feta

  • 1 head of roasted garlic, removed from skin
  • 1 lb frozen, chopped spinach
  • 8 oz feta cheese
  • olive oil
  • 1/2 tsp lemon juice

In a large saucepan (or in the microwave), heat the spinach over medium heat until it is thoroughly defrosted and just cooked – it should soften and turn a bright green color.  Remove from heat and let it cool.

In a food processor, add most of the spinach and crumbled feta, along with the roasted garlic and a tablespoon or two of olive oil.  Chop on medium speed until well blended, then taste.  Add more spinach and/or feta until you have a nice balance – you may want all of both.

Add the lemon juice, plus more olive oil if desired. Depending on how salty your feta is, you may also want to add a little salt.  Puree on high speed until the spinach is very finely minced.  I couldn’t get the texture quite as smooth as I wanted in my old food processor, but your mileage may vary.

dip_in_bowl

Toasted pita bread is a great accompaniment to this dip, but you could eat it on just about anything.  Be careful lest you find yourself eating it with a spoon, straight out of the bowl!

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Last minute holiday gifts

By Jo | Published: December 23, 2009

Peppermint bark pieces

Christmas is right around the corner now, and if you’re in a sudden panic realizing that you haven’t gotten all your gifts, never fear: there are a lot of quick, easy, and thoroughly impressive-looking foods you can make as gifts.  I was snowed in on Saturday, and made a stunning amount of food (which I then had to find room in my suitcase to transport).

Peppermint Bark

Our crazy machinations included peppermint bark (see recipe below), and these delicious rosemary-maple glazed nuts from Marisa at Food in Jars.  You could also try chocolate covered orange candy, or truffles (neither are hard, though they’re more time-intensive.

You should also check out Smitten Kitchen’s list of gift-able recipes – warning, do not drool on your keyboard while reading the list.

The ingredients for all these recipes are simple and easy to come by.  I like Trader Joe’s for finding large quantities of nuts and decent-quality chocolate at really good prices.

Spreading chocolate for peppermint bark

The trick for this peppermint bark (and for the truffles and candied orange peels, and anything else involving melted chocolate) is a process called tempering.  Tempering means letting chocolate harden at the right temperature and rate.  And it is a little tricky.  You know when chocolate gets old, and it sometimes gets a layer of white stuff across the surface?  That’s called blooming, which means that some of the fat has separated out to the surface.  It’s harmless, it won’t affect the taste, but it’s not so pretty to look at.  If you melt the chocolate down and temper it, no more bloom.  If you melt chocolate and let it harden at the wrong temperature and speed, it will invariably bloom.

This is my current favorite tempering method, courtesy Mark Bittman’s blog, Bitten.

To be honest, tempering is kind of a pain in the ass.  It’s time consuming, requires close attention, and if you spend to long working with it, it’ll get too cool and have to start over.  I find that when it’s properly tempered, it’s already too thick to work with.  Mark Bittman points out that bloomed chocolate can have pretty, swirly patterns, which actually look kind of nice.  So, if you’re feeling a little lazy, or the tempering doesn’t quite work out, just pass it off as an artistic choice.

Crushing candy canes with a mortar and pestle

Crushed candy canes

This recipe is, I suspect, very adaptable.  You could try nuts, other candies, whatever you like in place of the candy canes.

Peppermint Bark

  • Several pounds of good quality, semi-sweet chocolate
  • About a dozen medium, peppermint-flavored candy canes (or other topping of your choice)
  1. Break the candy canes into small pieces.  The best way I found to do this is to start by breaking them by hand, then put the pieces a few at a time into a mortar and pestle.  Instead of grinding them, as you usually do with a mortar and pestle, use the pestle to smash them to bits.  Be careful – pieces may go flying.  Another way to do this might be to put the pieces in a plastic bag, then go at them with a rolling pin or even a hammer.  Take care not to damage your furniture, smash your fingers, or frighten small animals.
  2. Line a couple edged cookie sheets with waxed paper.  We used 2 sheet for 2-3 pounds of chocolate.
  3. Melt the chocolate carefully in a double boiler (or a bowl, set over a saucepan with a little hot water in the bottom).  Don’t let any moisture get into the chocolate or it won’t harden properly.
  4. Temper the chocolate.
  5. Pour the chocolate into the prepared pans, smoothing it with a spatula.  Sprinkle the candy canes over it.  You can carefully tamp down the candy cane bits if desired.
  6. Let it cool for several hours until completely hardened.  Peel off the wax paper, break the bark into pieces.  No need to make neat and tidy pieces – jagged edges make a nice effect.

Crushed candy canes

Posted in holiday, homemade | 2 Comments

Social justice and sustainable food

By Jo | Published: December 8, 2009

A few weeks ago, I reflected on an article about the treatment of workers on organic farms.  I was skeptical that small/local/organic farms would treat their workers worse than a large, industrial farm would.

This recent article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian suggests that I was wrong – the average organic farm treats its workers similarly to large farms, and may provide less benefits.

This is likely the next big conundrum in the world of sustainable food.  While more and more people are recognizing the health benefits of local, organic food, in most cases the lower-income people who (perhaps) need it most are unable to afford it.  And often, that group includes the people who grew it in the first place.

So, to treat workers better, the cost to produce the food goes up, and so does the cost to buy it… bringing it further out of reach for low-income families.

I do believe that “sustainable” food should by definition include social justice, and should be available to all people.  But as a movement, we’ve still got a long way to go.

Posted in food politics | Leave a comment

Thanksgiving dinner: sweet potato ravioli and more

By Jo | Published: November 27, 2009

ravioli-with-sauce

Our first all-vegetarian Thanksgiving (and our first Thanksgiving in our new house) was a definite success.  Low-key and low-stress, we spent the day hanging around the kitchen: cooking, eating, cooking more, eating more.  Not a bad way to spend a day off.  Considering how adventuresome our menu was, I’m feeling proud – I’ve never made ravioli from scratch before, and they were the highlight of the day.  The cranberry bread, mushroom sauce, and apple pie all came out various degrees of tasty, but the sweet potato ravioli were something else.  I’m going to share the recipe (to the best of my memory) below.

apple-pie

We got started around 10:30 with baking the sweet potatoes, mixing up the bread, and prepping the crust for the pie.  Then we broke for a “light” lunch – cheese and crackers.  But it turned out to be heavier than we planned, because the cheese was addictive.  We splurged on two nice, imported cheeses from Whole Foods, neither of which we’d had before.

tallegio

The first was Tallegio, a semi-soft, rinded cheese that’s most similar to brie, but sweeter and a little bit nutty in flavor.  It was creamy and almost-but-not-quite soft enough just to spread on the crackers.

cardona

The other, cocoa cardona, was at the opposite end of the spectrum – a hard, tangy goat’s milk cheese, and as the name suggests, it was aged with cocoa powder smeared on the outside.  It wasn’t sweet at all, but the cocoa made it rich and gave it a nice edge.  It was about all I could do not to eat them all at once.  (It’s about all I can do now not to get them out of the fridge for “inspiration” while I write this post.)

After lunch, we started the ravioli.  Making the filling was easy and quick (a mixture of mashed sweet potato, cheese, and seasonings); shaping the ravioli was less time consuming than I expected, and easier than many other filled foods I’ve made.  (Assuming you use the right amount of filling, about a teaspoon, the ravioli were easier to work with and to seal than dumplings, wontons, or stuffed pastries.  If our pasta wasn’t exactly refined-looking, it also didn’t leak, even a little.)

ravioli-dough ravioli-maker2

The hard part was rolling out the dough.  We used about a pound of egg pasta, which consists of flour, a couple eggs, a pinch of salt, and enough water to hold it all together.  We had the benefit of a pasta maker, which we hadn’t used before yesterday, and it was a big help but didn’t stop the pasta from being long and unwieldy.  You can see in the pictures how long the strips were – and know that many of these we actually cut in half so they’d fit on the counter!

ravioli-strips2

I didn’t get any pictures of the pasta going through the machine, because it was really a 4-hand process.  However, the dough is really forgiving stuff.  It didn’t tear, didn’t stick to itself too badly, and didn’t get pulled out of shape as we passed it awkwardly around and around.

The process goes like this: you cut off a piece of the dough (we cut it in thirds), flatten it, and pass it through the machine on the widest setting.  If it isn’t quite smooth, you can fold it over on itself and pass it through a few more times.  Then, you move the machine to the next narrower setting, pass the dough through, move to the next setting, pass the dough through, and so on until you get the thickness you want.  Technically easy, but logistically complicated, because your fist-sized ball of dough quickly becomes a thin strip several feet long.  If you don’t have a pasta maker, you could almost certainly roll it out by hand and cut it into 2-inch strips, but the benefit of the machine is that everything comes out fairly uniform.  Plus, cranking the machine is much easier than rolling by hand (I know this, because I also made pie yesterday, and rolled that crust by hand).

ravioli-with-filling

ravioli-stuffed-2

The best part?  We not only had a filling dinner, but we now have several meals worth of frozen ravioli waiting for us in the future!

Sweet Potato Ravioli

Adapted from Deborah Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” (highly recommended)

Filling

  • 1.5-2 cups mashed sweet potato
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1/4 cup toasted pecans, finely ground
  • 1/4 cup breadcrumbs
  • 1/3 cup cream cheese
  • salt & pepper

Pasta

  • 2 cups flour
  • Pinch of salt
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 eggs
  • water

To make the filling, mash the sweet potato with butter.  Once it’s fully cooled, stir in the other ingredients, season to taste, and set aside.  (Refrigerate if not using immediately.)

To make the pasta, measure out the flour and make a well in the middle.  Add the other ingredients (except water), break up the eggs with a fork, and stir it all together.  If it won’t come together into a ball, add water, just a little at a time, and stir it all up until it holds together.  Knead the dough until it’s smooth, then cover and let it rest a few minutes.

To shape the pasta, roll out the dough into long strips (2 or 4 inches wide) using a pasta maker or a rolling pin.  The dough should be very thin but not so fragile you can’t work with it.  (Mine was almost transparent when it was done.)  On each strip, place a heaping teaspoon of filling in the middle of each 2-inch square, for half the length of the strip.  Dip your finger in water and wet the edges and the spaces between the filling – this will help the dough to seal.  Then fold the other half of the dough back over the filling, working slowly and pressing around the edges to seal it.  Then, cut them apart with a knife and place the finished ravioli on wax paper.

You can cook them immediately in (gently) boiling water for 4-5 minutes; if not, cover them with wax paper so they don’t dry out.

To store them for the future, place them on trays in the freezer until frozen, then keep them in a plastic bag.

ravioli-raw

ravioli-cooked

Posted in gourmet, holiday | Leave a comment

Planning for a Vegetarian Thanksgiving

By Jo | Published: November 22, 2009

Thanksgiving’s around the corner, and you can’t step outside without bloggers and food writers sharing their Thanksgiving recipes with you.  (And yet, everyone still seems to agonize about what to make – and tradition usually still wins out over fancy new recipes.  Curious, that.)

We decided not to travel this year – instead, we’re going to stay home and enjoy a rare long weekend in our new house that’s not dedicated to a home improvement project.  With all the work around the house that we’ve been doing, and a bunch of travel on top of that, it seemed like this was a good year to take it easy.  And while I’ll miss seeing my family and having our traditional menu, having dinner just for the two of us means we can have an all-vegetarian meal, which I’ve always wanted to do.

There are three strategies, in my mind, to vegetarianizing Thanksgiving: 1) make all your favorite traditional dishes, and just skip the turkey, which is what you’d do at a regular Thanksgiving dinner anyway, 2) concoct a protein-full main dish that fills the role of turkey in the meal (though, please, let’s not try to make something that looks or tastes like turkey but isn’t – there’s so much better food out there), or 3) make something extra-special that’s not traditional at all.  (I know one vegetarian who has an elaborate Indian dinner every Thanksgiving, and how could you go wrong with that?)

We’re doing something between 1 and 3 – a mix of tradition and other seasonal foods.  We’re also trying to gauge how much to cook for a 2-person dinner, and thus making fewer dishes than we otherwise would.  We’re still finalizing the details (I might like one more side dish), but here’s our plan:

  • Sweet potato ravioli
  • Mushroom-cream sauce
  • Cranberry bread
  • Apple pie

I promise to post some recipes later on!

If you’re still looking for ideas, check out last year’s big round-up of vegetarian Thanksgiving main courses, or Mark Bittman’s list of 101 prepare-ahead Thanksgiving dishes.  One of my favorites from his list:

60. Marshmallow topping for adults: Roast or boil chunks of sweet potato, put them in an oiled baking dish, top with dots of cream cheese, and sprinkle with a mixture of brown sugar, chopped pecans and chopped fresh sage. Broil until lightly browned.

What’s on your menu?

Posted in cooking for one or two, holiday, seasonal | Tagged | 1 Comment

Big farm benefits?

By Jo | Published: November 20, 2009

I’m back!  Did you miss me? …Did you know I was gone?  It’s been a crazy few weeks with not much time for me to blog, but life has calmed down now, and I’m trying to get back into the swing of things.  You can expect a whole slew of posts around Thanksgiving.

A friend recently shared with me Tracie McMillan’s article Better Off On Big Farms, where she argues that large farms are better for workers than small farms, and it rubbed me the wrong way.  My first instinct was to reject her claims out of hand, because, of course small farms are better than big ones.  We’ve all learned that big farms are pure evil, right?  How could they be better for labor?  I didn’t want to reject her ideas simply because they seemed strange, because she made some interesting points.

The gist of McMillan’s claim is that small farms have less stability and less capacity for employment.  Being small, they have few employees, tight margins, and might not be able to give workers regular work in all seasons, never mind benefits like health care.  A large farm or company can keep their employees year-round, moving to a new area as the seasons change.

Sounds plausible, to some extent.  But she also talks about how small farms are less well regulated than large farms – which is the opposite of anything I’ve ever heard from a small farmer.  If anything, the anecdotes I hear are usually about small farms being held to ludicrous standards designed for large farms, while large farms lobby their way out of regulations they don’t like.  And just because large farms have more revenue, does that mean they will, or are even likely to, treat their workers well?  (We know they treat their animals horribly, in pursuit of profit – I’m skeptical that they would, at the same time, go out of their way to treat their workers well.)

McMillan cites a story from one worker on a large farm.  What about large-scale protests of agricultural workers like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, who have been a huge voice for workers’ rights and cited terrible conditions for workers on farms, standing up to companies like McDonalds and Burger King?  Should we believe that they are an anomaly, that most agricultural workers are treated well and fairly?

I do agree with McMillan on one point – labor rights is an issue that’s far too often left out of the debate when we talk about sustainable food.  To have truly responsible food, it should be good for workers as well as the environment.

But if you want to make sure the people who produced your food are being treated well, don’t buy from big companies – buy Fair Trade instead.  And if you’re concerned about the labor practices on your local farms, go to the farmer’s market and ask the farmers.  The best way to know where your food comes from is to look for transparency – and when it comes to transparency, small farms definitely do it best.

I will admit, I don’t know much about labor practices on farms large or small.  Has anyone out there worked on a farm, and have a story to share?

Posted in food politics | 1 Comment

Rescuing dinner with unsung superhero ingredients

By Jo | Published: October 18, 2009

I like to use lots of whole, flavorful ingredients in my cooking, and let the food’s flavor speak for itself.  I suspect most people prefer to cook the same way.  When you have great ingredients, it’s hard for the outcome not to taste good.

But what about when you’ve whipped something up, you’re about to serve dinner, but you find that it tastes a little… bland.  Flavorless.  Needs a little something.

I’ve got a little list in my head of ways to rescue this situation – little-noticed and under-appreciated ingredients, maybe ones that have overwhelming flavors on their own, but when you add just a bit, suddenly the whole meal sings.  And the funny thing is, probably no one will taste it in there, even though they would certainly have noticed their absence.  These types of ingredients are the unsung superheroes in home cooking.  Superheroes, because with just a touch they can magically transform dinner from dull to delicious.  Salt and pepper are the most ubiquitous, but I also like to use:

  • lemon juice – to bring out an edge in neutral-flavored foods
  • vinegar – like lemon juice, a splash of vinegar can bring out a nice brightness… but too much will turn the whole dish sour.
  • maple syrup – on the opposite end of the spectrum, a dish with a lot of acidic flavors (like cooked-down tomatoes) can be balanced by a little sweetness
  • mustard – gives food a touch of tanginess, without the risk that comes with using vinegar

What you use will depend on the situation, and is best guided by your own instinct, but it’s handy to keep these tricks up your sleeve just in case.  And, this list is by no means complete – what are your favorite last-minute additions to fix up a dull dish?

Posted in tips | 1 Comment

Sweet potato peanut butter stew for dreary autumn nights

By Jo | Published: October 17, 2009

Well, it’s happened.  Our few, blissful weeks of cool, dry fall weather have turned abruptly into cold, wet, dreary pre-winter gloom.  It’s just gross outside, and has been all week.  Suddenly, my least-favorite thing to do is going outside, followed closely by looking out the window at the gloom.  My new favorite thing to do is put on lots of sweaters and huddle on the sofa with a cup of tea and a warm cat.

But I can’t live on tea alone, and that’s why our ancestors invented stew.

sweet_potato_stewStew is typically a meaty dish, but it can easily be made vegetarian and it’s just as warm and satisfying. It’s also a good clean-out-the-fridge dish, as it’s very forgiving, and the balance of flavors it usually less important than just having lots of hearty things in it.

Still, I’m proud of the stew I whipped up the other day – I think it came together with a lot of personality, and is different enough from the average stew to merit special recognition.  It’s loosely inspired by some West African recipes I’ve eaten and/or read, but doesn’t really follow any cooking tradition.  The choice of ingredients (especially the peanut butter) was guided partly by my imagination of what flavors might be nice, but equally as much by the fact that I was craving peanut butter that day.  It worked well.

The following “recipe” is more like a guideline – I lost track of how much of some things I put in, or how long they cooked, but like I said, you’ll find it pretty forgiving.

Sweet Potato Peanut Butter Stew

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tablespoon (or more) minced ginger
  • 3 cups warm vegetable stock
  • 1 cup warm water
  • Two small or one large sweet potato, diced
  • 1 can chickpeas
  • 2 tablespoons brown rice
  • 2 tablespoons peanuts
  • 1/4 cup (or more) chunky peanut butter
  • lemon juice, salt, and pepper (to taste)

Heat the olive oil in a large pot, and saute the garlic and ginger until the garlic begins to brown.

Add the water and stock, and bring it to a boil.  Lower the heat to a simmer, then add the sweet potato, chickpeas, rice, and peanuts.  Let it simmer half-covered for about an hour, until the rice is done and the sweet potato is falling apart.

Add the peanut butter and stir to dissolve.  Mash some of the sweet potatoes against the side of the pot to thicken the stew.

Simmer a few more minutes, then taste and add lemon juice, salt, and pepper as needed.

Serve piping hot and enjoy!

Posted in comfort food, seasonal, soup | Leave a comment

Green Festival 2009 – but where are we going?

By Jo | Published: October 11, 2009

Today, I went to the DC Green Festival. It’s a big, expo-style event with exhibitors, food, workshops, and super-star speakers.  Think of it as a who’s who of green businesses and green thought leaders.  It’s organized by Green America and Equal Exchange, two amazing non-profits in the green space.  It’s a great event, with a little bit of something for everyone who wants to be greener.  They adhere to a relatively broad definition of “green,” too, covering topics from carbon footprints to social justice.  There are food manufacturers, clothing vendors, non-profits, green builders, … the list goes on.  Alisa Gravitz of Green America described their goal as trying to get each attendee to learn one new way to be greener – and they must be succeeding, because it’s hard to believe that anyone could attend without learning at least something new.

I think this is the 4th year in a row that I’ve gone – every year that I’ve lived in the DC area, which seems now like a stunningly long time.  Every year I go, my experience and perspective is a little different.  This year… I feel cynical.  I walked through the main hall, where all the exhibitors have their tables, and was struck by the impression that, apparently, you have to spend a lot of money to be green.  There are a LOT of things to buy.  And, honestly, I wonder how green some of them really are.  Green America screens all the exhibitors, so you can be assured that all of them meet a standard, but the value of some of them is debatable.  Should you buy bottled iced tea?  Sure, it’s healthier than soda, but is it that much better for the environment than bottled water?  Why not buy some loose tea and brew your own iced tea?  It’s not rocket science.  Or, how about a soda-making machine for your home?  That doesn’t have the high carbon footprint from shipping water around the world, but what are the health impacts?  Should you really be drinking so much soda that it makes financial sense for you to make it yourself?  What about all the processed foods being sold?  Sure, the companies are green, but is it better to support a green company or cook for yourself?

These sorts of questions, conversations, and introspection are notably absent from the Green Festival, which at times seems to be more about creating new green consumers than greener lifestyles.  There are a lot of great companies there, doing some really noble things.  But there isn’t much debate about how to be green, or what it even means to be green.  The event is very green-economy focused, which is not surprising considering the organizations behind it.  Green America does amazing work critiquing large, irresponsible corporations and promoting small, green businesses in their place.  But because of that focus, there’s a whole side of the green lifestyle that’s not really represented, which is the notion that we, as a society, should start consuming less.

That gap is partially, but not satisfactorily, covered by the really top-notch speakers.  Again the topics vary, but most of the speakers focus more on the big picture and the future of the movement than on particular steps (or purchases) to make you greener.  This year, I had the good fortune to hear Dr. Cornel West and Joel Salatin.

Dr. West talked about the need for justice, and tied that need to the green movement.  I don’t think I can give a fair summary of his talk – it was rambling and inspiring and ended up as a cluster of big ideas in my head without particular points that I can remember and articulate.  But the gist was that there’s still a lot of injustice in the world, and that not only should Washington be addressing it, but we each need to live our lives with justice and love (Dr West is big on love) in our hearts.

The second speaker, Joel Salatin, took a much more political, pratical approach to being green.  He’s a farmer and one of the major advocates for small, sustainable farms in our agricultural policies.  He runs Polyface Farms in Virginia – if you’ve read Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” you’ll probably remember Salatin as the prime example of small organic farming.  He’s quite a speaker, and he’s unapologetically critical of Big Agriculture and the USDA (which he pronounces “U-S-Duh”).  His talk was called “Everything I want to do is illegal” and he took us on a whirlwind tour of the regulations designed for big factory farms that make it prohibitively complicated and expensive for small farms to do business.  He was especially vicious about the USDA’s insistence that farmers use “science-based” practices… while refusing to recognize studies suggesting that factory farming itself puts our food in more danger than small farming ever could.  At their heart, Salatin says, government regulations are designed on the assumption that farmers (large farms, that is) will do everything they can to cut corners… while honest, hard-working farmers who put their personal integrity towards the food they produce are forced to play by the same rules as the big guys.

From Salatin came my new favorite guideline for deciding whether to favor a government regulation: “If Monsanto’s for it, I’m against it!”  (Monsanto being the biggest of the big industrial agriculture corporations – whether or not you know them by name, they’re involved in the production of almost everything you eat.)

I think Salatin shared some of my frustration with the festival – towards the end, he somewhat apologetically shared something he “just had to get off his chest”: there were a lot of great companies at the Green Festival, but we’d all be better off if we’d just buy food from our local farmers, and cook it ourselves.  Amen to that!

Both the talks I saw were great, but there was still an overwhelming lack of dialog – lots of incredibly smart people sharing their ideas one at a time, with no conversation between them.

Maybe the Green Festival isn’t the right forum for that sort of dialog and deeper thinking, but I’m not sure what the right place would be.  Maybe it requires an entirely new event.  But it felt to me like something was missing – there was lots of joyful consumerism and sharing of innovation, but very little introspection.

Or maybe I am just getting old and cynical…

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Oatmeal, all dressed up

By Jo | Published: October 4, 2009

Oatmeal is my wintertime breakfast of choice, when I don’t have time for something more elaborate like pancakes or waffles.  I’ll typically make it with brown sugar and raisins, but that can get boring, so I try to vary it up, adding new and interesting ingredients from time to time.

But it’s not often I get to use fresh fruit – fruit season and oatmeal season don’t overlap much.  So, when I saw a box of raspberries at the farmer’s market this weekend, I knew I had to buy them and use them right away.  I had already been pondering oatmeal for brunch, and thought I would mix them in.  Oatmeal with raspberries!  It would be perfect.

I got my berries home and set about making oatmeal – boil the water, add the oats, simmer until done.  Except, as the oats were cooking, I found myself looking around for something to add that would complement the berries, and my nose was drawn to the mug of Earl Grey steeping on the counter.  Tea in oatmeal?  I pondered it.  Why not?  I poured half the mug into the oatmeal pot, and replenished the water in my mug.  I let it cook a little more to absorb the tea, then added some maple syrup, stirred in the raspberries.

It was good!  So good that I would do it again if I had the chance.  Anything with raspberries could hardly fail to be good, but in this case the ingredients melded really nicely.  In fact, I might try it again with frozen berries, which are both easier to come by and more economical.  The berries made it luxurious, and the tea – a successful experiment – gave it a hint of sophistication.  Next time, I would add the tea at the beginning, in place of most of the water, or else I might steep a tea bag as the water heated up.  Either way, I’d look for a stronger flavor.

And I regret that I don’t have pictures.  This was one of those spontaneous dishes that I didn’t think to photograph until I’d eaten half of it.

I’m still on the lookout for more fun oatmeal toppings.  Any suggestions?

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